I have been very fond of the teaching of the Anglican theologian N.T. Wright over the years. I have engaged in the majority of his works at some point or another over the past decade. I am well acquainted with the thrust of his theological emphasis and the controversy which sometimes surrounds him. Even though Wright has had a predominate voice within the theological world for decades now, he really didn't show up on the radar of most Americans until a few years ago. The famed author, theologian and pastor, John Piper, decided to take Wright to task and write a book of response to some of Wright's publications in regards to his theology of justification. Piper is also a man that I am very familiar with. He belongs to the same Baptist denomination that I used to belong to and I read probably a couple dozen of his books during my theological education at a Baptist University. Lets just say that I have always found Piper's theology off-putting and confusing and Wright's teachings came as a breath of fresh air to me. All of this is neither here nor there, however. I say all of this to make this point:
I will never forget the day that I read introduction to the book that N.T. Wright wrote in response to Piper's book of response to him. Yes, I said that correctly: Wright wrote a book to respond to a book that Pipe wrote in response to Wright. Within this introduction, Wright had a rather poetic and cutting way of articulating how the teaching which Piper promoted leads only to a sort of tunnel-visioned-egocentricity. He likened his conversation with Piper (and the evangelical school of thought which he promotes) in this way (and I am paraphrasing Wright's words big time here):
Suppose you have a friend over that you have not seen in quite some time. After spending some time catching up, you decided to go outside to observe the beautiful night sky together. It is then that your friend says to your surprise, "Oh, how much God loves us! He has put us and our planet at the center of the universe! See how the night sky and all that it contains revolves around us!" To your surprise and dismay, you think to yourself, "We have known for quite some time that we here on planet earth are not the center of the universe. Everything does not revolve around us! In fact, we are a part of a system of planets which revolved around the sun within our galaxy and our galaxy is very small compared to the limitless others which exist out there." So, you gently seek to correct your friend feeling saddened that he has been confused about something so massive. He accepts your words with confusion and with apparent reluctance, but you both decide to call it a night and go to bed. then, in the middle of the night you hear a tapping on your door and you open it to hear your friend's beckoning voice. "Come with me," he says, as he leads you outside to observe the night sky. "See the movement of the stars. See how they all move around us! They circle around us. How can you say that it is we who are the ones doing the circling?"
Wright's point: like our friend in the story, many Christians today have difficulty whenever it comes to understanding that everything does not revolve around us. We have been so fixated on notions of "personal" salvation and personal relationships with Jesus for so long that it is hard for us to grasp the bigger picture of what God is doing, not only in us, but with the wider creation as well. It has become increasingly hard for us to understand that the Christian life does not revolve around us as individuals but that it actually revolved around the Triune God, the One seated upon the throne. While many well-intentioned Christians will agree with my previous statement, many of them will not understand how they actually fail to live this Christ-centered orbit in practice. They may think that they are living with Christ at the center but, in fact, it is their lives which are at the center of all their actions.
To me, this is most clearly evidenced in the ways in which we both define and live out two key concepts within the Christian faith: worship and discipleship.
It may seem a bit radical for me to claim that we have gotten worship and discipleship wrong in recent years but that is exactly what I am claiming. There was a time whenever worship and discipleship meant very specific things. Granted, both of these terms encompass quite a bit in how they can be defined in all actuality. However, there used to be some very central ideas contained within both terms that are no longer central to the ways in which we both think about and carry out our practices of worship and discipleship. To look at one example: both terms were always seen as highly, highly communal in ancient Christianity. Yes, all of life is worship and all of life is discipleship. However, the ancient Christians never ever saw these as things that we can do independently and apart from others. Worship and discipleship had concrete communal implications for the lives of everyday Christians. The notion that, "I am a spiritual person but I don't like institutions--so I don't God to Church," would've been an absurd idea to most Christians up until recent times. In fact, to use modern vernacular, they very much so would've doubted that someone with this type of mentality was "saved" to begin with. Listen to these words from Ignatius of Antioch, "He who fails to join in your worship shows his arrogance by the very fact of becoming a schismatic...If, then, those who act carnally suffer death, how much more shall those by wicked teaching corrupt God's faith for which Jesus Christ was crucified. Such a vile creature will go to the unquenchable fire along with anyone who listens to him." Heretics are the ones who live in isolation, who seek to do worship and establish thoughts about God in their own ways. Not so with the Christians. To be a Christian meant being a communal being.
The same goes for discipleship. In an age where no one really seems to know what "discipleship" means it is very important to understand its communal essence. Discipleship is about more than simply having a personal relationship with Jesus (even though this is of utmost importance). It is also, and quite centrally, about having a proper relationship with the people who are to be His icons: ministers. Not only was (and is) discipleship about having a relationship with Jesus it is about having a living relationship with your minister. This is also where corporate worship comes in and plays another central part: it is primarily through the worship services at Church that we are discipled by Christ through His ministers. This happens through the liturgy, or is meant to happen at least.
Discipleship and worship, then, are both "liturgical." I will explain what this means more in Part 2 of this post.
A few concluding thoughts for time being:
We like to think that we can do worship however we like, do we not? We define worship in the ways which seem most comfortable to us, bending the notion of worship to our own will and definition. We are no different than our friend who points us to the beautiful night sky and sees himself as the center of it all. Worship revolves around us; our wants and desires...our specific preferences for the feel and style of the types of worship that we want. Although there is much comfort in embraces such a sentimental notion (that we are the center of it all), such a notion does not come without a great and tragic cost. We will fail to see our actual place in the universe and the beauty of the orbital dance which we could be participating in. We will fail to see how God has created all things with a specific goal in mind for each and every one of them. Thus we will fail to see ourselves and everything else for what we are all intended to be.
Whenever we remove ourselves from the center of it all, whenever we allow God to define both worship and discipleship for us, we can then begin to relate to Him and the created world around us in the Way that He intended for us.
We will learn to see the beauty not in being the center, but in being the humble speck which orbits someone much greater than ourselves.
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
Friday, July 18, 2014
Why We Are Allowed to Suffer
We are going to continue our series this morning on the teachings of the Heidelberg Catechism. Let us look at Lord's Day 10 together, shall we?
leaf and blade,
rain and drought,
fruitful and lean years,
food and drink,
health and sickness,
prosperity and poverty—
all things, in fact,
come to us
not by chance
but by his fatherly hand.
Q. How does the knowledge
of God’s creation and providence help us?
A. We can be patient when things go against
us,
and for the future we can have
good confidence in our faithful God and Father
that nothing in creation will separate us from his love.
For all creatures are so completely in God’s hand
that without his will
they can neither move nor be moved.
Even though we could go several different directions this morning, I really want to fine tune things for us and focus on one concept from the passage in particular. These words of the Heidelberg are easy for us to accept whenever everything is going well, whenever life is easy and good, whenever there are minimal burdens and heartaches. It is easy for us to look and see and confess that clearly the hand of God has guided us through times of blessing whenever we are going through these times. What about the times, however, when things are bad, when we suffer greatly, whenever we begin to despair even life itself? It is not so easy, then, to confess these words; that even through times of intense pain God's hand is guiding everything around us in life and that He is guiding us through our painful circumstances. Furthermore, it is one thing to recognize that whenever we suffer we are being afflicted by the demons. This is fairly easy to accept even though we don't like it whenever it happens to us. It is another thing, however, to understand that God allows this to happen to us. He allows us to suffer. He allows us to be afflicted by the demons. It is quite difficult for us to reconcile the notions that "God is love" and that He also allows us to go through times of tremendous suffering at various points in our lifetime. I mean, listen to the words of Paul:
"In order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me." -2 Corinthians 12:7
Paul was "given" a messenger of Satan to torment him. He was "given" this....by whom? The Lord. God "gave" Paul a messenger of Satan so that Paul would not become conceited, or overly prideful. We are already learning why God allows us human beings to suffer so much even though He loves us with an infinite love: He allows it so that we will not become prideful, and He allows us to suffer in order that we might be severed from our pride. God allows us to be tormented by demons so that we can learn to do away with our selfish and destructive prideful tendencies. In other words, God loves us so much that He refuses to let us destroy ourselves in pride. Again, this is a concept that many of us can comprehend, ideally at least. But what does this look like in the Christian life? Perhaps many people are swept away from the faith, and many of us are so taken aback whenever hardship falls upon us, because we do not readily recognize where suffering fits in our lives as we seek to follow Christ.
Sometimes I believe that the way the spiritual life is taught to us is misleading. For example, whenever I was in school, all of my theological professors and my textbooks taught me that the pattern to the Christian life looks something like this: conversion, sanctification and glorification. In other words, you convert to the faith, to Jesus. That is conversion. Then, you grow in holiness. You are transformed by your relationship with Christ. That is sanctification. Lastly, you are finally and fully perfected upon your death or at Jesus' return. That is glorification. I am not saying that this is wrong. It is perfectly Biblical and correct. But it doesn't mean that this can't be misleading by the way that we teach it and understand it. Unless your life looks more like that of Enoch or Elijah, where you transition smoothly from one phase of the spiritual life to the others...you are most likely going to feel like the pattern we are looking at doesn't quite fit your life...because it leaves no room for hardship, for suffering and trials. It leaves no room for us who know all too well that sometimes we don't feel very sanctified whenever we should be growing. It makes no room for those seasons of life that we all go through whenever, instead of growing in our faith, we feel as though we are stagnate, falling backwards or even as though the flame of faith as been extinguished within us.
So, I think there is a different pattern to the spiritual life that might be more beneficial to us; a pattern that is clearly articulated in the Scriptures and learned firsthand from experience. See if you can see the pattern in the lives of these people:
Job: went from peace, to intense suffering, to restoration (twice of what he had before the suffering)
Israel: was freed from the Egyptians, lost in the wilderness, then led into the promised land
Israel again: in the promised land, led into captivity, returned to the promised land
Humanity as a whole: we have gone from perfect Adam, to fallen Adam, to the new Adam (Jesus)
Jesus: by the Father's side, suffered unto death on the Cross, resurrected, ascended to the Father.
Peter: followed Jesus and witnessed His glory on Tabor, then denied Him, then was restored to Apostle
Do you see the pattern?
First, there is a phase of initial grace: where it is easy to pray, easy to love, easy to find motivation to study the Bible and there is much peace and joy.
Then comes the time of trial/suffering: (Now, I am not talking about being tried because a coworker at work said a nasty thing to you. No, I am talking about a season of spiritual apathy and perhaps depression and many of us don't actually recognize it for what it is whenever we are going through it). During it, we must fight for what once came easily to us. We must fight to pray, fight to love, fight to read the Bible. We sense a bit of a separation between ourselves and God and it is a time of much suffering as the soul weeps over what it senses it has lost. It is wandering in the wilderness, lost in exile...so to speak. The previous joy and passion feels as though it is being extinguished. It is as season where we feel as though God has taken a step back from us. God stepped back and let Satan torment Job. God stepped back and let Israel be taken captive. God stepped back and allowed His Son to cry out, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?"
Lastly, then comes the restoration if we persevere: with it comes a deep rooted peace and sense of discernment comes upon us. Pride no longer has a place within us and prayer goes on without ceasing. It does not mean that we have been made perfect. That won't happen until we die or Christ's return. It does mean, however, that we are, like Job, twice as strong as we were before going through the time of trial, the season of hardship. Most importantly, perhaps, is that prayer becomes extremely powerful. Job prayed for his friends and his prayer was heard and cherished by God.
So, we have learned so far that: we are allowed to suffer so that we will not become prideful. We also realize that suffering is a part of the spiritual life in Christ. We are given seasons of suffering and trials so that we can become stronger, by God's grace.
Let us look further into the practical outworkings of all of this by reading what Paul has to say to the Corinthians: (2 Cor. 1:1-11)
“Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,
To the church in Corinth, together with all His holy people throughout Achaia:
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."
The first thing that I want you to notice and the only thing about the greeting for time being is that this letter is from both Paul and Timothy and is addressed to the church in Corinth. This is important for understanding the contents of what follows:
Pay attention to what Paul (and Timothy) are saying here: ministers are allowed to suffer so that they can guide the people of God faithfully through their own periods of suffering. Ministers are given suffering so that they can speak from experience as they seek to comfort the people of God as they struggle during seasons of trials. We ministers suffer, in other words, for you. We suffer for you: "If we are distressed, it is for your comfort, your salvation. If we are comforted, it is for your comfort." We receive comfort from the Lord after seasons of suffering so that we can then turn and show you the Way through suffering and into the comfort which God gives. Lets read on. This is a fascinating set of verses:
"He has delivered us from such deadly peril, and He will deliver us again. On Him we have set our hope that He will continue to deliver us, as you help us with your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favor granted us in answer to the prayers of many.”
We see in all that Paul has written here, not only the reason why we suffer, but how Christians can learn how to suffer together. This is so important and ferociously overlooked in our day. We are given a beautiful image of how ministers and the people of God are to harmoniously exist together and mutually help one another, as they all seek to follow Christ in the ways in which they are called. Ministers are allowed to suffer and come through it so that they can console and guide the people of God through their seasons of spiritual stagnation, intense temptations, and severe pains. This is allowed to happen to us ministers so that we can speak from experience as we seek to guide the people of God. We can give you more than just interesting ideas. We can do more than paint you a picture or a map of how to get out of the season of life that you find yourself in. We can actually guide you out of it as people who have already been there before.
The people of God, however, are given a tremendously important task: they are to help their ministers by praying fervently for them; that their ministers would suffer for the sake of Christ and gain the wisdom of the Lord in the process. The people of God not only help themselves as they pray for their ministers but they help the masses as well. As Paul has said, the "many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favor granted" to the ministers as they help people. Again, though, as you pray for us you are actually helping yourselves because, through your prayers, God makes us faithful guides to you.
Before we conclude, we need to address things a bit more poignantly:
This will not happen if we ministers refuse to suffer well, if we do not persevere until the end. We will be like Paul's other disciple, Demas, who, when times got tough, left the ministry and Paul's side for the world. If we ministers do not readily and gladly suffer for Christ's sake, taking up our crosses, we will not make it through periods of trials, temptations and hardship. We will not be able to speak to others of the comfort of the Father, nor lead people to it, because we will not have received this comfort ourselves.
This (mutual help) will also not happen if you do not pray for us ministers. I know my heart and I have come to know Pastor Gil's heart very well over the years as I have sought to study his every move and imitate the wisdom which he has passed onto me. I know our intentions and where we are at. To the person among us who may be tempted to say: "I never get anything out of Gil's teaching, or Tj's teaching," I say to you: it is because you have failed to pray for us. If you don't pray for us, you shouldn't expect God to give you anything from us. You will gain great riches from the Lord if you pray for Gil and I, especially from Gil and he is much more experienced than I am. However, there is tremendous benefit for you in praying even for someone like me. I pale in comparison to Pastor Gil. I am a foolish man and still fairly inexperienced in the ministry. Yet, I am given to you to help guide you and your children. And if you pray for someone like me, you may be surprised what God gives you through me. And, I can assure you that I have most definitely suffered for your sake and for your benefit. I have sufferings of which nobody here knows about. Just because you do not know about them, however, does not mean that it is not so. I have suffered much, very much, for you all. I have learned-my wife and I have learned-how real the demons are and how much pain they can inflict and how much they hate it whenever a minister and his wife pray for the church. I can tell you what they look like and how much they hate it whenever prayers are offered on your behalf. I can tell you of the excruciating physical pain that they can inflict just to keep someone from praying for you and for your children.
God allows us to suffer, all of us, for our own benefit. And, God gives you ministers so that you will be benefitted during your times of hardship. God has given us all suffering so that we would be inter-dependent; so that we would not rely upon ourselves through our struggles, through our cross bearing, through our following Christ. We truly do need one another and you need your ministers, please don't kid yourselves. If you are undergoing a long period of struggle, of doubt, of spiritual dryness, of apathy in prayer...perhaps it is because you have not leaned into your ministers as you should. And, perhaps God is refusing to heal you until you relinquish your pride and seek the guidance of the ones who God has provided for you, the ones who have gone on before you.
There is no reason to try to fake it, or try to cover it up if that is where you are at. There is no shame in it. As we have seen, suffering and testing is a part of our spiritual journey towards and with Christ Jesus. Don't try to cover things up out of a fear of what others may think or of what we ministers might think of you. For one, what you bring up to your minister is between you and your minister. We are not going to tell everyone of your struggle, not that you should be ashamed of it to begin with. We are all sinners here, are we not? Furthermore, there is nothing that you can say that will surprise us. I have heard it all. If I have already heard it all, I certainly know that Gil has. Don't let Satan convince you that your struggle is going to offend or surprise us. Seriously, we are sinners too and you might be surprised to learn how much and how intensely we have struggled with the exact same things that your are currently wrestling with. So, all of this to say: don't sweep it under the rug. I have been at this church for five years now. Please forgive me, but this needs to be said. We are experts at sweeping our personal issues under the rug. We are experts at ignoring the spiritual struggles within us while we go about our churchy business and daily lives. I wish we could understand how tremendously harmful this is for us and for our children. At different points throughout the week on the mission trip in Colorado, the Holy Spirit began to teach our kids the importance of Paul's teaching and the kids came up to me to share about their struggles and seek comfort from their minister. One of our kids told me about what they were struggling with. This person had waited a very, very long time to share about their struggle with me. Then, they told me that they had waited so long because our church , to them, is not a church where we share these deeply rooted struggles. They have received the impression that our church is not a safe place for people to deal with their personal spiritual struggles. That our church is not a place where people can be truly transparent with the things in life that ail them. I held it together the best that I could and then I found a corner and I wept bitterly and begged God to have mercy on each and every one of us. I wept because that was this student's perception of their church family and that they are not the only student who has told me this over the years. I wept also because that is my perception of my church family. I see where they are coming from and I agree with them. My brothers and sisters....such things should not be. We may not change overnight but the change in our church begins with this: If you are going through a spiritual rough patch, don't fall into Satan's trap and let your pride take you over. Stop saying to yourself, "I have no need to talk about my current state with my minister." The only person you are deceiving is yourself. Come and talk to your ministers. Let us disciple you and let us guide you out of this time of heartache into the time of comfort and joy. that is why we are here! And, for God's sake, if you do it for nothing else, do it for our younger generations. Be courageous for them! Change the tide for them! Nobody needs to know what you and your minister have spoken about, or even that you came to them to begin with. People will see your progress, though, and God provoke others to be inspired by your hidden actions as they see you come out of your time of wandering in the wilderness and into the promised land.
Don't just see us ministers as guys who create programs for you or for your kids, and don't just see us as guys who give you nice little sermons to think about week in and week out. No, see us for what we are. See us for who we are. See us for who God has made us into for your benefit. If only you knew....if only you knew how much we have suffered for your sake, how intensely the demons have waged war upon us, you would never make an excuse to remain in your apathetic state ever again, but you would come and receive from us the comfort which we have ourselves received from the Lord.
Q. What do you understand
by the providence of God?
by the providence of God?
A. The almighty and ever present power of
God
by which God upholds, as with his hand,
heaven
and earth
and all creatures,
and so rules them that and earth
and all creatures,
leaf and blade,
rain and drought,
fruitful and lean years,
food and drink,
health and sickness,
prosperity and poverty—
all things, in fact,
come to us
not by chance
but by his fatherly hand.
Q. How does the knowledge
of God’s creation and providence help us?
and for the future we can have
good confidence in our faithful God and Father
that nothing in creation will separate us from his love.
For all creatures are so completely in God’s hand
that without his will
they can neither move nor be moved.
Even though we could go several different directions this morning, I really want to fine tune things for us and focus on one concept from the passage in particular. These words of the Heidelberg are easy for us to accept whenever everything is going well, whenever life is easy and good, whenever there are minimal burdens and heartaches. It is easy for us to look and see and confess that clearly the hand of God has guided us through times of blessing whenever we are going through these times. What about the times, however, when things are bad, when we suffer greatly, whenever we begin to despair even life itself? It is not so easy, then, to confess these words; that even through times of intense pain God's hand is guiding everything around us in life and that He is guiding us through our painful circumstances. Furthermore, it is one thing to recognize that whenever we suffer we are being afflicted by the demons. This is fairly easy to accept even though we don't like it whenever it happens to us. It is another thing, however, to understand that God allows this to happen to us. He allows us to suffer. He allows us to be afflicted by the demons. It is quite difficult for us to reconcile the notions that "God is love" and that He also allows us to go through times of tremendous suffering at various points in our lifetime. I mean, listen to the words of Paul:
"In order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me." -2 Corinthians 12:7
Paul was "given" a messenger of Satan to torment him. He was "given" this....by whom? The Lord. God "gave" Paul a messenger of Satan so that Paul would not become conceited, or overly prideful. We are already learning why God allows us human beings to suffer so much even though He loves us with an infinite love: He allows it so that we will not become prideful, and He allows us to suffer in order that we might be severed from our pride. God allows us to be tormented by demons so that we can learn to do away with our selfish and destructive prideful tendencies. In other words, God loves us so much that He refuses to let us destroy ourselves in pride. Again, this is a concept that many of us can comprehend, ideally at least. But what does this look like in the Christian life? Perhaps many people are swept away from the faith, and many of us are so taken aback whenever hardship falls upon us, because we do not readily recognize where suffering fits in our lives as we seek to follow Christ.
Sometimes I believe that the way the spiritual life is taught to us is misleading. For example, whenever I was in school, all of my theological professors and my textbooks taught me that the pattern to the Christian life looks something like this: conversion, sanctification and glorification. In other words, you convert to the faith, to Jesus. That is conversion. Then, you grow in holiness. You are transformed by your relationship with Christ. That is sanctification. Lastly, you are finally and fully perfected upon your death or at Jesus' return. That is glorification. I am not saying that this is wrong. It is perfectly Biblical and correct. But it doesn't mean that this can't be misleading by the way that we teach it and understand it. Unless your life looks more like that of Enoch or Elijah, where you transition smoothly from one phase of the spiritual life to the others...you are most likely going to feel like the pattern we are looking at doesn't quite fit your life...because it leaves no room for hardship, for suffering and trials. It leaves no room for us who know all too well that sometimes we don't feel very sanctified whenever we should be growing. It makes no room for those seasons of life that we all go through whenever, instead of growing in our faith, we feel as though we are stagnate, falling backwards or even as though the flame of faith as been extinguished within us.
So, I think there is a different pattern to the spiritual life that might be more beneficial to us; a pattern that is clearly articulated in the Scriptures and learned firsthand from experience. See if you can see the pattern in the lives of these people:
Job: went from peace, to intense suffering, to restoration (twice of what he had before the suffering)
Israel: was freed from the Egyptians, lost in the wilderness, then led into the promised land
Israel again: in the promised land, led into captivity, returned to the promised land
Humanity as a whole: we have gone from perfect Adam, to fallen Adam, to the new Adam (Jesus)
Jesus: by the Father's side, suffered unto death on the Cross, resurrected, ascended to the Father.
Peter: followed Jesus and witnessed His glory on Tabor, then denied Him, then was restored to Apostle
Do you see the pattern?
First, there is a phase of initial grace: where it is easy to pray, easy to love, easy to find motivation to study the Bible and there is much peace and joy.
Then comes the time of trial/suffering: (Now, I am not talking about being tried because a coworker at work said a nasty thing to you. No, I am talking about a season of spiritual apathy and perhaps depression and many of us don't actually recognize it for what it is whenever we are going through it). During it, we must fight for what once came easily to us. We must fight to pray, fight to love, fight to read the Bible. We sense a bit of a separation between ourselves and God and it is a time of much suffering as the soul weeps over what it senses it has lost. It is wandering in the wilderness, lost in exile...so to speak. The previous joy and passion feels as though it is being extinguished. It is as season where we feel as though God has taken a step back from us. God stepped back and let Satan torment Job. God stepped back and let Israel be taken captive. God stepped back and allowed His Son to cry out, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?"
Lastly, then comes the restoration if we persevere: with it comes a deep rooted peace and sense of discernment comes upon us. Pride no longer has a place within us and prayer goes on without ceasing. It does not mean that we have been made perfect. That won't happen until we die or Christ's return. It does mean, however, that we are, like Job, twice as strong as we were before going through the time of trial, the season of hardship. Most importantly, perhaps, is that prayer becomes extremely powerful. Job prayed for his friends and his prayer was heard and cherished by God.
So, we have learned so far that: we are allowed to suffer so that we will not become prideful. We also realize that suffering is a part of the spiritual life in Christ. We are given seasons of suffering and trials so that we can become stronger, by God's grace.
Let us look further into the practical outworkings of all of this by reading what Paul has to say to the Corinthians: (2 Cor. 1:1-11)
“Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,
To the church in Corinth, together with all His holy people throughout Achaia:
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."
The first thing that I want you to notice and the only thing about the greeting for time being is that this letter is from both Paul and Timothy and is addressed to the church in Corinth. This is important for understanding the contents of what follows:
"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us (ministers)
in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with
the comfort we ourselves receive from God.
For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our
comfort abounds through Christ."
Notice this...this is of extreme importance...that this is not just a generalized "us" who receive the troubles and the comfort. No, God comforts ministers (Paul and Timothy) in their troubles so that they can then comfort those who are going through hardship with the comfort that they themselves have received. It is not as though Paul is saying that we all receive comfort from the Lord so that we can comfort others who are going through distress. Even though this is also true to some degree, it is not what Paul is getting at here. Lets read on:
"If we (ministers) are distressed, it is for
your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which
produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer. And our hope for you is firm, because we know
that just as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our comfort."
Pay attention to what Paul (and Timothy) are saying here: ministers are allowed to suffer so that they can guide the people of God faithfully through their own periods of suffering. Ministers are given suffering so that they can speak from experience as they seek to comfort the people of God as they struggle during seasons of trials. We ministers suffer, in other words, for you. We suffer for you: "If we are distressed, it is for your comfort, your salvation. If we are comforted, it is for your comfort." We receive comfort from the Lord after seasons of suffering so that we can then turn and show you the Way through suffering and into the comfort which God gives. Lets read on. This is a fascinating set of verses:
"We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and
sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far
beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. Indeed we felt we had received the sentence
of death. But this happened that
we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead."
He says that they were under great "pressure." The Greek word for "pressure" depicts this imagery: it is an overwhelmingly crushing burden that just gets heavier and heavier. It is what happens in life whenever we feel as though one bad thing after another keeps stacking on top of us and we begin to feel suffocated by it all, as if any minute now we are going to be absolutely and devastatingly broken to bits. Ever feel this way? You know what Paul is talking about, don't you? The feeling that he is getting at?
He also says that God gave them more than they could endure. Let me rant for a second....don't ever tell somebody whenever they are going through a difficult time that, "God will not give you more than you can bear" because it is absolutely not true. What does Paul say here? God gave them more than they could endure. People who say that God will not give them more than they can handle have not suffered in reality and have no wisdom to offer. Or, and worse yet, perhaps they have suffered greatly but they were too hard-hearted to learn anything from their experience. Hear this: God can and will give you more than you can handle in life. He will break you, absolutely. Why? Paul tells us:
Paul says that this happened so that they would not rely upon themselves but on God. This is the locus of all that we have been getting at this morning and the very central part of the answer to the question, "why are we allowed to suffer?" We are allowed to suffer so that we would not rely upon ourselves, but on God. Another way of saying it is this way: God allows us to undergo suffering to show us that we can
lose all things except for Him. God allows us to suffer, it is a part of the plan, so that we would not cling to our prideful tendencies which destroy us, but so that we would cling solely to Him and rely upon Him alone, for He is the only One who can raise the dead. Paul continues:
"He has delivered us from such deadly peril, and He will deliver us again. On Him we have set our hope that He will continue to deliver us, as you help us with your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favor granted us in answer to the prayers of many.”
We see in all that Paul has written here, not only the reason why we suffer, but how Christians can learn how to suffer together. This is so important and ferociously overlooked in our day. We are given a beautiful image of how ministers and the people of God are to harmoniously exist together and mutually help one another, as they all seek to follow Christ in the ways in which they are called. Ministers are allowed to suffer and come through it so that they can console and guide the people of God through their seasons of spiritual stagnation, intense temptations, and severe pains. This is allowed to happen to us ministers so that we can speak from experience as we seek to guide the people of God. We can give you more than just interesting ideas. We can do more than paint you a picture or a map of how to get out of the season of life that you find yourself in. We can actually guide you out of it as people who have already been there before.
The people of God, however, are given a tremendously important task: they are to help their ministers by praying fervently for them; that their ministers would suffer for the sake of Christ and gain the wisdom of the Lord in the process. The people of God not only help themselves as they pray for their ministers but they help the masses as well. As Paul has said, the "many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favor granted" to the ministers as they help people. Again, though, as you pray for us you are actually helping yourselves because, through your prayers, God makes us faithful guides to you.
Before we conclude, we need to address things a bit more poignantly:
This will not happen if we ministers refuse to suffer well, if we do not persevere until the end. We will be like Paul's other disciple, Demas, who, when times got tough, left the ministry and Paul's side for the world. If we ministers do not readily and gladly suffer for Christ's sake, taking up our crosses, we will not make it through periods of trials, temptations and hardship. We will not be able to speak to others of the comfort of the Father, nor lead people to it, because we will not have received this comfort ourselves.
This (mutual help) will also not happen if you do not pray for us ministers. I know my heart and I have come to know Pastor Gil's heart very well over the years as I have sought to study his every move and imitate the wisdom which he has passed onto me. I know our intentions and where we are at. To the person among us who may be tempted to say: "I never get anything out of Gil's teaching, or Tj's teaching," I say to you: it is because you have failed to pray for us. If you don't pray for us, you shouldn't expect God to give you anything from us. You will gain great riches from the Lord if you pray for Gil and I, especially from Gil and he is much more experienced than I am. However, there is tremendous benefit for you in praying even for someone like me. I pale in comparison to Pastor Gil. I am a foolish man and still fairly inexperienced in the ministry. Yet, I am given to you to help guide you and your children. And if you pray for someone like me, you may be surprised what God gives you through me. And, I can assure you that I have most definitely suffered for your sake and for your benefit. I have sufferings of which nobody here knows about. Just because you do not know about them, however, does not mean that it is not so. I have suffered much, very much, for you all. I have learned-my wife and I have learned-how real the demons are and how much pain they can inflict and how much they hate it whenever a minister and his wife pray for the church. I can tell you what they look like and how much they hate it whenever prayers are offered on your behalf. I can tell you of the excruciating physical pain that they can inflict just to keep someone from praying for you and for your children.
God allows us to suffer, all of us, for our own benefit. And, God gives you ministers so that you will be benefitted during your times of hardship. God has given us all suffering so that we would be inter-dependent; so that we would not rely upon ourselves through our struggles, through our cross bearing, through our following Christ. We truly do need one another and you need your ministers, please don't kid yourselves. If you are undergoing a long period of struggle, of doubt, of spiritual dryness, of apathy in prayer...perhaps it is because you have not leaned into your ministers as you should. And, perhaps God is refusing to heal you until you relinquish your pride and seek the guidance of the ones who God has provided for you, the ones who have gone on before you.
There is no reason to try to fake it, or try to cover it up if that is where you are at. There is no shame in it. As we have seen, suffering and testing is a part of our spiritual journey towards and with Christ Jesus. Don't try to cover things up out of a fear of what others may think or of what we ministers might think of you. For one, what you bring up to your minister is between you and your minister. We are not going to tell everyone of your struggle, not that you should be ashamed of it to begin with. We are all sinners here, are we not? Furthermore, there is nothing that you can say that will surprise us. I have heard it all. If I have already heard it all, I certainly know that Gil has. Don't let Satan convince you that your struggle is going to offend or surprise us. Seriously, we are sinners too and you might be surprised to learn how much and how intensely we have struggled with the exact same things that your are currently wrestling with. So, all of this to say: don't sweep it under the rug. I have been at this church for five years now. Please forgive me, but this needs to be said. We are experts at sweeping our personal issues under the rug. We are experts at ignoring the spiritual struggles within us while we go about our churchy business and daily lives. I wish we could understand how tremendously harmful this is for us and for our children. At different points throughout the week on the mission trip in Colorado, the Holy Spirit began to teach our kids the importance of Paul's teaching and the kids came up to me to share about their struggles and seek comfort from their minister. One of our kids told me about what they were struggling with. This person had waited a very, very long time to share about their struggle with me. Then, they told me that they had waited so long because our church , to them, is not a church where we share these deeply rooted struggles. They have received the impression that our church is not a safe place for people to deal with their personal spiritual struggles. That our church is not a place where people can be truly transparent with the things in life that ail them. I held it together the best that I could and then I found a corner and I wept bitterly and begged God to have mercy on each and every one of us. I wept because that was this student's perception of their church family and that they are not the only student who has told me this over the years. I wept also because that is my perception of my church family. I see where they are coming from and I agree with them. My brothers and sisters....such things should not be. We may not change overnight but the change in our church begins with this: If you are going through a spiritual rough patch, don't fall into Satan's trap and let your pride take you over. Stop saying to yourself, "I have no need to talk about my current state with my minister." The only person you are deceiving is yourself. Come and talk to your ministers. Let us disciple you and let us guide you out of this time of heartache into the time of comfort and joy. that is why we are here! And, for God's sake, if you do it for nothing else, do it for our younger generations. Be courageous for them! Change the tide for them! Nobody needs to know what you and your minister have spoken about, or even that you came to them to begin with. People will see your progress, though, and God provoke others to be inspired by your hidden actions as they see you come out of your time of wandering in the wilderness and into the promised land.
Don't just see us ministers as guys who create programs for you or for your kids, and don't just see us as guys who give you nice little sermons to think about week in and week out. No, see us for what we are. See us for who we are. See us for who God has made us into for your benefit. If only you knew....if only you knew how much we have suffered for your sake, how intensely the demons have waged war upon us, you would never make an excuse to remain in your apathetic state ever again, but you would come and receive from us the comfort which we have ourselves received from the Lord.
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